


The Book of Pain

by Hippediva



Category: The Pillow Book
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-08-01
Updated: 2001-08-01
Packaged: 2017-10-08 05:14:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/73061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hippediva/pseuds/Hippediva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Rating: NC-17 (bdsm)</p>
    </blockquote>





	The Book of Pain

**Author's Note:**

> Rating: NC-17 (bdsm)

  
The Book of Pain

The Book of Betrayal

no, not a book...more of a scribble. In English. Whether coherent or drifting   
into madness is yours decide. I'm quite beyond any judgment of myself or   
anyone else. But I wanted you to see how I fared--how I never learned, just   
as you predicted. You knew it all, five years ago. And I? Well, I never   
did learn, or maybe I simply needed to create chaos, suffering , pain in   
the wake of love for myself and my lovers. It's a rare talent, one not often   
granted to a man, especially an Englishman. I have come to believ e that   
it's one of my only talents.

I used to think I could, should, needed to write. But the novels never got   
written. You see, I lived them instead, so I never really needed to discipline   
myself into writing them down. Once the plot had become a memory , it was   
better left so. Or maybe it was just laziness. That's what my mother used   
to say; her, Yamataki, Sogi, nearly everyone. Brilliant but lazy. Only interested   
in doing what came easily to me. It's very likely true. Language is easy,   
just as discerning beauty is easy, and accepting love in all its forms is   
easy. At least to me, these things were simple; too simple to understand   
them as talents. Easiest of all is suffering. Yes, I have a truly rare talent   
for it.

You will recall Himahachi-San, when Sogi and I were lovers. I cannot imagine   
you've forgotten that. You never did believe that I got my just desserts   
after that, but you were wrong. You were so wrong, and neither of us could   
ever have foreseen the twisted road karma would take to make my payment   
sufficient. But you also have never heard the entire story, as I know Sogi   
never told you.

It began in our last year at University. We were always friends, as well   
as rivals. How many exams became nothing more than spirited competitions   
between us, I can never remember. Then, one evening, word games somehow   
became flesh games. A fleeting brush of the hand became more lingering,   
a look more lengthy and questioning. All the time, we were laughing, translating   
Dante, I believe, from one language to another. I could not, in honesty,   
tell you which of us moved first. No matter. We were entwined around each   
other and that, as they say in America, was that.

I do realize that it was some small solace for you to know that he had been   
the aggressor, the dominant. You and I had that long, long talk and I held   
nothing back from you. I owed Sogi that much, not to be ashamed of our love   
, or of my place in it. What I didn't tell you were all the risk-games we   
began to play.

In a perverse way, you would have been proud of him: he was so inventive,   
so fearless. It began with mild bondage--very juvenile, rather sweet and   
tentative as I recall it now. But university dorm rooms afford little opportunity   
or equipment to play in a manner that either of us found acceptable. We   
began to look for other places. More often than not, we resorted to a local   
brothel, where we rented space by the hour. I can see your face in my mind   
as you read this and I do know what you're thinking: how appropriate a place   
for me. True. I would never entertain the thought of arguing with you, Himahachi-San.   
There, we had the space and time to explore worlds within worlds together.

I know you are ready to burn this letter out of hand, but I also know that   
you won't because beyond your outrage is avid curiosity. Sogi especially   
liked the fact that the bed was already rigged, so it was easy to tie me   
up however he liked. No more resorting to scarves and old school ties. What   
had begun as soft, giggling play got rougher, the ropes tied tighter, Sogi   
's hands bruising against my flesh. It wasn't enough. Not for him and not   
for me. He took me up a ladder of sensations: blindfolds, gags, finally   
chains . Those were his particular favourite. It was best of all when I   
could barely walk out of the room I was so stiff from whatever wondrous   
position he'd held me in for hours.

Then he decided we needed to move ahead once more. Now pain, in all it's   
many forms, became a bedside toy. You know all about pain. He was a demon   
with a whip, and he had quite a collection. I know you found them in his   
room: I recognized the riding crop, you see, during our talk. That I didn   
't tell you. To bring the matter up, at the time, seemed redundant. Not   
to mention indelicate. I may be many things, Himahachi-San, but I do have   
a sense of delicacy and some kind of propriety, however twisted.

Sogi enjoyed that crop. And he used it. Oh, how he used it. He left wonderful   
black welts across my skin like a tiger's stripes. Never anythi ng permanent,   
never a scar or even more than a few drops of blood. And he like d mirrors,   
so I could watch those blood drops bead my body like dew. It seemed to fuel   
his passion, and that, of course, was my greatest desire. Yo u see, Himahachi-San,   
I did love him. I quite worshipped him and would have done anything he required   
of me to please him. You will, later, understand exactly what I mean by   
that.

From mirrors, he moved forward again, ever the adventurer, ever questing   
for greater sensation for us both. He hired prostitutes from the brothel   
to join in our play--men, women, boys--mostly men. Now I do have your interest,   
I know. Unfortunately, hired lovers are not particularly good lovers and   
that soon ended. They were, to a man, insipid, boring and only excited by   
the money and that was not high on either Sogi's or my own list of erotic   
enticements. So Sogi hit on a master plan. He did not wish to degrade our   
love with easy and dangerous pickups. We'd done that a few times and most   
were nearly as bad as the prostitutes. One was so shocked by Sogi's propo   
sal that he tore out of the room in his shorts. We laughed about it for   
weeks.

He began to ask the prostitutes about their clients and, with a little judicious   
spying and gossip-mongering, put together a list of about fifteen potential   
participants who would enjoy our play without shock and with discretion.   
After all, there were still exams to study for, classes to take, our honours   
placement to consider. Our games were our own private world, one to whom   
he would only invite those he deemed worthy. And exciting.

I cannot begin to describe to you the sensation of being given over by my   
lover to a complete stranger for the first time. It was terrifying and exhilarating,   
and although I disappointed him that night, he understood my fears and quickly   
made me understand how much it pleased him to see me give myself in that   
fashion. What fashion, you are asking yourself? Why, any fashion Sogi and   
my new and nameless lover wished. My desire was theirs, my will bent to   
theirs, by my own choice. There were no limits and no rules, save that I   
was never, never to be permanently hurt or worse, permanently marked. That   
was something Sogi would never have allowed.

I felt perfectly safe within the confines of his dominance, and I was content.   
Soon, I was able to take on as many as he wished, knowing how much it excited   
and delighted him to watch me. And afterwards, his kiss was all I ever needed   
to believe that I was doing what he desired. Of course there were tears;   
tears, and screams, and sometimes abject hysteria. But it all melted away   
in his pleasure. Now, I see your grimace, and the question in your eyes.   
All in good time, Himahachi-San. No good story ends too abruptly or is told   
too swiftly. You must be patient to understand all I'm saying.

As you can imagine, a mere fifteen men did not remain new for long. There   
were three or four who were welcome to our room regularly. And Sogi wanted   
more. That's when he began to take me in public. You're nodding, begin ning   
to understand how dangerous it was becoming, and how it all ended as it   
did. He was really quite an actor, able to keep his face completely blank   
while h e was inside me in any number of places. Oh yes, much more than   
the cliched alley! Sogi was far more courageous than that: there were buses,   
daytime restaurants, parks, trains, midnight cafes. I could, even now, pick   
out at least two or three dozen places within the area of the university   
where he had me. This was the appetizer to whatever entree he'd planned   
for that night.

He was so skilled at matching them to whomever he had elected to join us   
fo r the evening. If it was to be only us two, he would pick the most crowded   
place possible. If it was more, well...I think you understand me. Then,   
he began to branch out to other areas. He chose business districts, especially   
those more inclined to the arts and the intellect. It seemed appropriate.

Our luck was, in retrospect, quite remarkable. We were caught, twice, but   
it only required a little convincing to wriggle off the hook, and afforded   
u s both two nights of great amusement and greater passion. Those two incidents   
happened within the University confines. In another district, we were not   
so lucky. Our joss ran out at Yamataki's bookstore. Again, I know you are   
nodding. But it didn't happen quite the way Yamataki-San told it to you.   
And he caught us weeks before he finally went to you.

We were, I remember, in the history section. A little too drunk, a little   
too anxious and we'd been discovered. Instantly, we knew that the little   
game we'd been playing at had become truly dangerous. He watched us, of   
course. I caught his eyes at the last moment, hovering through the bookcase   
behind Sogi. I couldn't stop, and neither could Sogi--not if we'd been shot   
on site could we have stopped at that moment. I turned to Sogi, after he   
had finished; whispered, but I had barely utterly three words when Yamataki-San   
was beckoning us, from the end of the stack. There was nothing to do but   
follow him.

This time, we couldn't get off that hook. In the privacy of his office,   
he was infinitely polite, as you well know, and quietly made it clear that   
we had only to deal with him, explain to him. And he never accepted a small   
story. Sogi was so brave, so proud. I'd never been more in love with him   
than I was at that moment. It was a kind of relief when Yamataki asked me   
to undress. He was enchanted and enchanting as he asked Sogi to explain   
each welt, each bruise in detail. It seemed we had stumbled on a kindred   
spirit by accident and that lulled us both into a fatal ease.

Yamataki-San took us back to his home that night. And for the next several   
weeks, we spent little time at our brothel room. All seemed to be well,   
we stopped worrying. Even if this sharing began to irritate Sogi almost   
as much as the loss of control , it was better than police and jail, disgrace.

It didn't last, of course. The last night was a nightmare for us both. That   
night, I was the watcher, as Yamataki-San took Sogi as he'd been taking   
me for so long. Worse were the cameras, flashing like explosions. Unlike   
Sogi , Yamataki-San has a taste for the indelicate. Never bloody, but humiliating   
for my beloved, who was a master, an oak. Not a willow or reed like me,   
capable of bending to the moment. I was unable to move, bound as I was,   
and I wept for hours. Sogi never wept. At least, he never did while I could   
see him. He might have later, when he was alone.

After it was all over, Yamataki-San told us he was finished. There was nothing   
further he wanted of Sogi. Me, on the other hand, he was, in his own words,   
'delighted with' and intended to keep. He advised Sogi to let me go to him,   
and me to come willingly. Of course, we both protested. Quite vociferously.   
We were in love, I was his, he was my lover. He listened to all our pleas   
very patiently, then ordered Sogi out. Sogi refused to leave without me.   
In the end, Yamataki-San had him thrown out by his servants.

To his credit, Yamataki-San was very gentle with me, very kind. He is not   
and never has been a brute. But there was no refusing him, although I certainly   
tried. There was the university, graduation looming in less that two weeks;   
other pictures he'd obtained from the brothel owner; and he threatened Sogi   
with the police. I was determined not to betray my lover an d yield our   
relationship that easily.

Then he threatened to go to you, Himahachi-San. Of course, I realized much   
later he was lying to me: he had already spoken to you on the telephone   
and sent you a letter. He kept me there for two days. I finally persuaded   
him that I would return freely, if he would only let me take the exam I   
had, lest I fail my German course. By the time I returned to the University,   
it was all over. Sogi was dead and you were waiting for me.

I have always wished I had broken away from Yamataki-San earlier. Funny   
it should come back to haunt me now. Then again, I do not think I would   
have enjoyed finding Sogi. Seppuku is such a messy death.

I never showed you the letter he left me. I cannot now, as I burned it along   
with the paper books and bridges I burned at the Ryo Temple in his memory.   
But I remember every word of it. He knew you had been told. I think Yamataki-San   
must have whispered it to him, before he was thrown out. I was too distraught   
to hear. Sogi could not face you or his own humiliation. He felt that he   
had failed me, as though I were worth the worry. He couldn't bear his own   
sense of disgrace. I would have rather had him alive at any cost, but that   
was never Sogi's way.

In that letter, Sogi told me exactly how to handle you, what to do. My last   
gift to him was seducing you. And I did seduce you, however much you though   
t you were the one controlling me. I only paused once, when you chose that   
riding crop to take out your grief and fury on me. But, in my mind, you   
see , it was his hand, ghosting over yours, wielding the whip, and I gave   
myself to it gladly.

Sogi instructed me very carefully. I do not know how he knew what pleased   
you so well. It cannot have been easy for him to discover his own father   
s secret desires. But he did, and he was most explicit in what I was to   
do for you. Well, you were pleased, and that, for me, was his pleasure and   
my only desire.

In the end, I did betray Sogi. I remained with Yamataki-San. Willingly.   
He slowly became a new master, a mentor. Finally, in the truest sense of   
the word, a lover.

Am I faithless? Yes, I admit it freely. I betrayed Sogi, just as I betrayed   
Yamataki-San, and Nagiko. That last betrayal will be the last. I am, finally,   
tired of betrayals, tired of being the willow. I have reached the last place   
of love and will end here.

You will, no doubt, hear of how I used my body for Nagiko against Yamataki-San.   
Romantics may think I did it to revenge myself for Sogi, but that is not   
the truth. I learned, in these past five years to care for him and my decision   
was a wild impulse to do anything for her. I fell in love with her. Then   
I wrecked it, of my own free will. You see, Himahachi-San, you were so right   
when you told me that my ultimate danger would be the exercise of my own   
will. I was given that chance, and it has killed me.

Have I paid for Sogi, even just a little? I don't know. If you think so,   
then remember me with some kindness. If not, well...it's far too late to   
care. You might, however, if you do care at all, tell Yamataki-San of my   
death. He will want to know why I do not come to him next week. I know he   
will be distressed. At least someone will mourn me a little.

Enough. I am already drowning in enough self-pity. I will end this with   
affection. I wanted you to know how Sogi has arranged for me to finally   
join him. And to thank you for that talk. It was a most pleasant memory.

Speaking only on the wind, I flutter to the earth, unseen, a whisper.

Jerome  



End file.
